Convergence India 2010: Products custom-made for India

Roni Weinberg, COO, Radwin Wireless Solutions, tells us about Radwin's penetration plans in rural India, their power efficient products and how, keeping India's weather and culture in mind, products are customized for the Indian market.

Tell us something about your work in India.
We have been selling in India since the last four years and also globally. In India, we cater to most of the major tier-1 operators as well as ISPs and also to government institutions. We deal with point-to-point links in frequencies below six GHz. Our main focus areas are back-haul for cellular operators, Wimax operators and last mile services for corporates - end users who want high capacity.

What challenges did you face while catering to the Indian market?
We had to customize our products for the Indian market. We ensured that our products were made robust and as per the Indian regulations so that it will be suitable for the stringent laws of the Indian market. India is also a challenging area because of its varied culture. Backed up by the vast experience with certain carriers in India, we cater to the Indian market rightfully by establishing our subsidiary in Delhi with offering sales, customer care and technical services.

Any new products from Radwin?
We have come up with Radwin 200C series which is a 100 Mega-bit per second product with assymetric capabilities. These units have already been tested and are being deployed right now as we speak in 100 s of units across India.

What are your future plans for India?
We are eyeing two major growth drivers in the coming years. The first being penetration in the rural areas of India, as we have products which very well suit the Indian requirements for the rural areas. Two main characteristics of our products aimed to be deployed in rural areas are that they have a very low power consumption and are very easy to install. As opposed to the normal time of eight to ten hours,these units will only take one hour to be deployed. The other driver that we are eyeing is deployement of WiMax backhaul units in the coming time.

We also plan to cover all areas in India which do not have facilities like fiber. Though we cater to high-end corporate users, but we also aim at small-end, SOHO users as well.

What are the lucrative areas which you see in India for expansion?

As the people in India wait for 3G and WiMax auctions to happen,and operators making these available to customers, we see the expansion of cellular and WiMax as big opportunities. In my opinion,India is a very strategic market and we plan to continue to invest here and offer the required products at the best cost.

Meenakshi Rohatgi is Correspondent of Technology Review India edition.